


flowers in the window

by cuecard



Category: World Wrestling Entertainment
Genre: F/F
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-05-10
Updated: 2019-05-21
Packaged: 2020-02-29 07:10:54
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 13,014
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18773776
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/cuecard/pseuds/cuecard
Summary: Like a song she has forgotten even exists, the needle has touched the record at the exact right time and the woman has stepped into Becky’s life without Becky even really realising it.OrThe artist au that two people asked me for.





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> Title comes from Travis - Flowers in the Window :) 
> 
> It's an awesome song and everyone should listen to it!

They bump into each other for the first time on a rainy Wednesday night in March.  
  
They’ll bump into each other again in four months time too.  
  
Becky is in a hurry. The rain is beginning to soak through her hoodie and the more she blinks the more her vision goes. The rain has that unruly quality about it – the type of rain that doesn’t feel like much but when you’re in it you end up drenched through your clothes.  
  
That’s why when she turns the corner in an almost jog she doesn’t see the woman huddled underneath a tiny flimsy umbrella trying to protect the basket of flowers she has tucked away under her right arm.  
  
There’s a dull sounding thud. And then there’s blue petals falling like colourful confetti in amongst the raindrops.  
  
“Shit! Are you alright?” Becky asks, leaning over.  
  
The woman frowns, deeply enough to assure Becky that no, she certainly isn’t okay. And no, she certainly isn’t amused by this whole thing either but then again, who would be?  
  
“I think so.”  
  
Surrounded by pretty blue petals, Becky’s not sure she’s seen anything so poetic. They encircle the woman on the ground in the rain and Becky’s fingers twitch on their own accord at the sight of it.  
  
Becky watches as the woman winces and then pushes herself up and onto her feet, reaching for her umbrella on the way up. “Damn it, watch where you’re going the next time!”  
  
“Are you okay?” Becky asks again.  
  
The woman looks down at her hand and there’s a small trickle of blood coming from her thumb but the rain quickly washes it away as if it was never there in the first place. “Well my flowers are ruined and I have blood coming out of my thumb, so no, not particularly.”  
  
“Least you’re up on your feet now. That’s an improvement from down there,” Becky says and she goes to smile but the glare that is shot her way quickly derails that.  
  
She glances down at the flowers that now lay at their feet instead. Becky has no idea what they are but she knows that they are pretty. Modest. They are lacking in the bright richness of roses or poppies or lilies but Becky usually finds the simple things in life are usually better anyway.  
  
“What are they?” Becky asks, looking up and then nodding back down towards the ground.  
  
“They were Forget-Me-Not’s. Now they are mush.”  
  
Becky glances back down at the concrete and the wet ruined petals have basically taken on the unappealing quality of crushed fruit. She feels guilty. She pulls out a twenty note from her pocket, and then another. “Will this cover them? I don’t know what the goin’ rate for flowers is.”  
  
The woman makes no move to take the notes and instead chooses to glare at Becky again. Men and woman have buckled under that glare; Becky is certain of it. She’s pretty sure some of them had liked it a little too. She feels a bit like an idiot standing in the pouring rain holding money out in her hand.  
  
“I don’t want your money.” The woman’s jaw is practically ticking with tension, Becky can see it. “And I don’t sell flowers.”  
  
“Oh. So what was with all the flowers then?”

The woman continues to look at Becky and the question hangs in the air between them like the now sodden money that Becky is still fucking holding out like an idiot. She retreats her hand back towards her pocket as subtly as she can.  
  
“Alright, don’t tell me then.” Becky rolls her eyes, half at the woman and half at herself.  
  
“Don’t worry, I wasn’t going to.”  
  
Who cares why she had all those pretty flowers anyway? Certainly not Becky. Not even a little bit. Absolutely not. Of course, the fact that the woman isn’t going to tell her makes Becky wonder even more. Goddamn this woman and the stupid pretty flowers.

The woman gives Becky a non-committed, totally false smile before she walks away into the rain, throwing a pathetic glare back over her shoulder for good measure.  
  
Becky swallows tightly and then feels her heart shift in her chest, like an animal finally waking from hibernation.  
  
Like a song she has forgotten even exists, the needle has touched the record at the exact right time and the woman has stepped into Becky’s life without Becky even really realising it.

You see, life has coincidences. Serendipity occurs. Right place, right time or wrong place, wrong time. It stems from the fact that there are about seven billion people colliding with each other in the space of a single planet. But there’s an unspoken rule in Becky’s life – there are no coincidences.  
  
Everything happens because of calculated moves that lead her to where she is. Coincidences are just like illusions.

Then again, maybe there aren’t illusions either.

Maybe things are just supposed to be a certain way and that’s that.

*****

Charlotte’s date had sucked.  
  
No, not in the mutually polite ‘this was fun but we probably shouldn’t do it again’ type of date, it was more the ‘I’d rather be in Hell than relive a single second of it’ type of date. She’d even started clock watching at the time and counting down the minutes until it had been acceptable to leave. So yeah, her date had totally sucked.  
  
That’s why on a Wednesday night of all nights, she finds herself outside a building that has certainly seen better days. She pulls the metallic blue Ford Mustang into a free parking space and kills the engine - the car had been a gift from her father for her 21st birthday.  
  
She sits for a minute, resting her head back and holding onto the wheel, not really knowing why the hell she is thinking about a birthday that happened years ago. There was nothing she loved more at the time than taking road trips in the summer with her friends. She smiles bitterly at the memory then.  
  
Charlotte Flair, twenty one years old. Hot car. Hot woman. Hot friends. Hot times.  
  
Then the hot times had come to a juddering halt and here she is about to pick up her best friend from work after another bad date so that they can go home to the apartment that they currently share in a ‘transitional area’ of the city which basically translates as the building you’re staying in sucks but if you walk for ten minutes you can see where all the rich people live. Good times.

By the time she opens the driver’s side door and climbs out of the car the rain outside has turned into a mist. It throws a petrol like blue tint across everything, from the clouds above to the sidewalks below, it’s as if all the light has escaped.  
  
She heads towards the coffee shop where Bayley works and where she usually stops in the morning after her routine run. By the time she pushes through the door the stillness inside is a jolt to her system – the place is usually always busy with queues almost out the door – but tonight the place is totally empty, save for Bayley who is wielding a mop.  
  
“That bad?” Bayley asks with an easy smile.  
  
“Like you wouldn’t believe. Can I get some tea?”  
  
Bayley sighs like Charlotte has just ruined her whole night. “Okay, but it’ll have to be plain.”  
  
“That’s fine.”  
  
The place is so quiet that the chair creaks when Charlotte sits on it. There’s something almost eerie about being in something as simple as a coffee shop after dark when it is usually so full of life. Charlotte’s not sure she likes it much.  
  
When Bayley returns with a disposable cup she brings with her a printed out piece of paper that looks like it’s been folded a hundred times over. Charlotte has a feeling that it should belong on the community bulletin board that’s near the coffee shop door instead of Bayley’s pocket.  
  
“Here.”  
  
Charlotte takes the paper and stares at it for a second before looking back up at Bayley. “You can’t be serious.”  
  
“Of course I am.”  
  
“I’m not sitting posing for someone to paint me, Bayley. It’s weird!”  
  
“It’s not painting… it’s drawing.”  
  
“That doesn’t make it any less weird.”  
  
“Look at the money, Char.”  
  
“Well, you do it then.”  
  
“I can’t, I’m not good at that kinda thing and you know it.” Bayley shrugs as if that’s the end of it before she adds, “It’ll pay a chunk of our bills or it'll be extra so we can do whatever we want with it.”  
  
The famous guilt trip. Bayley is a surprising master at it and Charlotte falls for it every damn time because literally no one can say no to Bayley’s puppy dog eyes. It’s an impossibility.  
  
“Do you even know who the artist is?” Charlotte asks before taking a sip of her drink and looking back down at the flyer.  
  
“Sure, her name is Becky. She comes in here almost every morning after you and she’s always nice so when she asked if I could pin this flyer I said yeah… I also told her that you may give her a call.”  
  
“Fine,” Charlotte huffs, “I’ll call tomorrow at some point.”  
  
Bayley hugs her then, arms around Charlotte’s shoulders and her chin on Charlotte’s head and it’s a comforting hug despite being uncomfortable all at the same time.

*****

She looks at the flowers and with the sky ablaze in a fiery red and orange and the sun dipping out of view beyond the window, the flowers take on a new lease of life. They look darker now, more vivid. Perfect.  
  
Ever since she can recall, Becky has loved to draw. She was one of those kids who never really paid attention at school because she was too busy doodling in the corner or decorating the inside sleeve of her notebook. It wasn’t as if she planned on making a career out of it, it just kind of happened by happy chance.  
  
The beautiful thing about art is that anyone can do it. And it doesn’t matter how good or bad you are at it, you can do it. Just pick up a pencil or a brush and draw whatever the hell you want. That’s what makes it so easy.  
  
She sits at the canvas in front of her, twirling a fine brush in a water cup. Colour rises from the bristles, moving through the liquid with ease until the water turns a milky blue, much like the flowers she’s spent the last few hours recreating.  
  
Artists always want to make everything their own, there’s an animalistic greed and hunger for that and yet, the flowers still elude Becky and have done for months now. There’s always something not quite right about them in her recreation. Tonight is no different. She’s starting to think that maybe they are a little too delicate for her own hand.  
  
She removes the brush from the water, gently dabbing the bristles on a clean towel and taking great care to make sure that she dries them in the right direction. It doesn’t matter how often she paints – and these days it’s not often at all – she is always conscientious about the clean up. There’s something oddly soothing about the whole routine of it: washing, drying and then putting things away in the right order.  
  
There’s blue paint everywhere: on her t-shirt, on her hands, there’s even blue blood like paint splatter on the floor. It always takes Becky by surprise even though it shouldn’t. She’s always in her own world when she paints – unaware of anything and anyone except for the colour on the canvas – so when her phone rings she answers it without a second glance at the screen.  
  
“Yeah, it’s Becky,” she says as she looks back at the canvas, at those damn elusive flowers.  
  
“Hey, this is Charlotte. I think my friend Bayley said I would give you a call?”  
  
“Oh, for the modeling session? Yeah, she told me she thought you’d call. Are you up for it? Cause if not it’s fine – “  
  
“No,” Charlotte interrupts, then she takes a moment as if she needs to choose the right words and a sliver or trepidation snakes its way into her voice, “it’s still paid, right?”  
  
Becky hesitates but only for a second. “It’s paid. Everything on the flyer is legit.”  
  
“Fine, I’ll do it then.”  
  
Becky gets the feeling that this woman definitely does not want to do this and she’s also pretty certain that if no money was involved this woman would definitely not be on the phone to her right now.  
  
“Are you sure?” Becky asks, “don’t feel like you have to, I’ve had plenty people turn me down for this before.”  
  
Charlotte pauses then, it would be easy to just hang up the phone right now and stop this whole awkward situation and put her foot down. Bayley would get over it. Instead, she ends up saying: “I’m sure.”  
  
“Alright, how does next Friday suit you?”  
  
“It’ll have to be in the evening, around 6?”  
  
“That’s fine,” Becky answers, “I’ll text you the address of the studio. It’s on the third floor, there’s stairs but you’re better off using the elevator.”  
  
“Noted. See you next Friday.”  
  
The woman hangs up then and Becky stares at her phone, confusion covering her face like a mask. What the fuck was that?  
  
She quickly texts Charlotte the address of the studio and then she makes her way over towards the window so she can move the damn flowers.

*****

It’s just before 6.pm when Becky hears a knock on the studio door. For some reason she’s not remotely surprised that Charlotte is a little early, she has the feeling that Charlotte wants this over and done with as quickly as possible so the earlier they start the earlier they will be finished. It makes sense, Becky reasons, she’d be the same if she was doing something she didn’t really want to.  
  
Two things happen when Becky opens the door.  
  
One: She instantly recognises Charlotte as the woman she ran into several months ago.  
  
Two: Charlotte instantly recogises her too; it’s written all over her face and Becky’s not sure it’s good.  
  
“ _You’re_ the artist?” Charlotte blurts out almost automatically. “The person who knocked me on my ass a few months ago?”  
  
“That’s me,” Becky answers, “I think we’re destined to keep bumping into each other or somethin’.”  
  
Destiny. It’s a funny idea that is encouraged by writers and poets and apparently artist's too. Even if Charlotte does believes in destiny – which she absolutely does not she’ll have you know – running into Becky isn’t her destiny. It can’t be. Not a chance.  
  
Without even thinking about what she is doing, Charlotte moves forward into the room that Becky calls her studio. “Don’t worry, I don’t have any plans to cross your path again any time soon after this.”  
  
“Oh, alright. Well I guess I can sleep soundly tonight then.” The corner of Becky’s mouth lifts in a stupid cocky grin and the sight of it infuriates Charlotte even more.  
  
“This is… this is not what I was expecting,” Charlotte admits. The studio is pristine. For some reason she had it in her head that studio's were messy and untidy and a bit of a riot but this is spotless and everything looks as if it has a particular place.  
  
There are several large canvases on the wall; drawings of women in several different poses, one is even nude but it has been tastefully done and Charlotte wonders if Becky has drawn them herself or whether they have been a gift or whether she just bought them because she wanted them.  
  
Becky’s not the kind of person Charlotte would usually associate with art if she’s being honest with herself. Becky’s bright hair is struggling free of its ponytail and she has a scrubbed clean look to her with barely a hint of make up. Her sneakers are scuffed and worn and there are smudges of pencil on her t-shirt. And despite all that there is an innocent, attractive beauty that lights up her features.  
  
Becky watches as Charlotte sizes her up. Charlotte’s face is some how pale and bright, some how curious and caring, some how kind and strong, she has the prettiest face Becky’s ever seen. But there’s something else there too, lurking underneath, and it isn’t all light. There’s a hint of shadow there too, a darkness dancing under the surface, a shade of something deeper.  
  
Becky starts to wonder how she can attempt to draw Charlotte. How she can possibly capture all the things she has seen in the last few moments. Charlotte’s face is going to be the hardest because a face is usually all about the light, but that light usually comes from what is in the inside and shining out, especially around the eyes.  
  
And she can feel the steady hum of Charlotte’s nerves, but Beck’s also pretty certain there’s an undercurrent of sadness there too. Charlotte really doesn’t want to be here at all. Becky had known that from the phone call but in person it rolls off Charlotte in waves. Becky isn’t used to it. Her own capacity for sadness is relatively low these days; she intends to keep it that way too. But some people like to grab at it and give it a home within themselves. Becky is pretty sure that Charlotte is one of those people.  
  
“Your first time sittin’ for someone?” Becky asks simply. Most of her models don’t talk to her and she’s fine with that. But she has the feeling that she has to break the ice here.  
  
“Yep. Why? Are you going to try and knock me off my feet again?”  
  
“Knock? Nah. Sweep? Maybe.”  
  
Becky sees it on Charlotte’s face then: a tiny, brief little smirk and she knows that she hasn’t sunk – yet.  
  
“I don’t want to be here for what it’s worth.” Charlotte’s voice is flat enough for the words to slip back under the studio door and her eyes go stiller, if that is even possible. They are nice eyes though. Somewhere, deep down they have a dreamy quality about them, Becky is sure of that. A bit like a Degas painting.  
  
_A Degas painting? Really, Becky? Fucking hell.  
  
_Becky clears her throat then and injects as much sarcasm into her sentence that she can muster. “Really? I hadn’t noticed that at all.”  
  
Becky’s eyes narrow playfully. They are piercing dark eyes framed with lovely long lashes and when she aims her gaze directly at Charlotte, Charlotte has to remind herself to breathe for some strange reason.  
  
What on earth is going on?  
  
“Let’s just get this over with.”  
  
“Alright, take a seat. Get comfy, it might take awhile.”  
  
Charlotte sits in such a way that she tries to hide and she’s good at it, she’s clearly had a lot of practice.

Becky thinks she’s pretty anyway.  
  
-  
  
Boredom has always been something that has plagued Charlotte. She’s used to keeping herself busy and active - mind and body included - so sitting as still as possible in the middle of a studio while staring at someone trying to draw her shouldn’t really appeal much to her.  
  
The boredom doesn’t appear though which is the most surprising thing.  
  
Charlotte thinks of the money she is going to get for a few hours of her time and what she can do with that. She thinks of the sun that’s currently plummeting out of the sky outside the building. She thinks of what she is going to eat for dinner when this is done. She thinks of the pencil Becky has clutched between her nimble fingers. She thinks of the way Becky’s tongue peeks out every so often to wet her lips.  
  
“Stop thinking so much,” Becky says gently, and it’s the first time she’s opened in mouth in over half an hour. It’s not exactly a telling off and Charlotte doesn’t take it as such but there’s a slight lilt in Becky’s tone that tells her she should relax a little and she wonders what has given her away.  
  
“How did you know?”  
  
Becky smirks then; quick and fleeting. “I’ve done this all before. I know when people’s train of thought goes. A guy I drew a few years ago asked for a break every half hour so you can imagine how long that took me. Never again.”  
  
“Why did he even agree to pose for you then?” Charlotte asks.  
  
“Probably the same reason you did,” Becky answers easily, “the money.”  
  
Charlotte’s mind should be setting off warning flares but instead all she is offering is a nod. “Point taken.”  
  
“Thought so.” Becky tilts her head to the side and then back onto the canvas. She pushes away from the seat she is sitting on and walks a few paces so she is standing in front of Charlotte. “Can you just tilt your face to the right for me? Wait, can I just move you like this?”  
  
“Yeah.”  
  
Becky puts her hand onto the curve of Charlotte’s chin and Charlotte’s head lifts a little higher and then shifts slightly to the right. Becky leans down and oh it’s awkward, it’s really awkward for some reason. Becky’s finger traces over the curve of her cheek and then slips over the bridge of her nose and if Becky notices her breathing a bit quicker she doesn’t mention it and Charlotte is more than grateful for that.  
  
What the hell is happening?  
  
Becky makes her nervous for some reason and no one really makes her nervous anymore. She can’t say why Becky is an exception but she is and Charlotte’s not entirely sure that she likes it.  
  
-  
  
“And… I’m done.”  
  
Becky’s voice breaks Charlotte from her daydream and she’s been sitting in such a way for so long that she swears she can feel pins and needles tickling her neck. It almost hurts to move her head and she’s stunned to find out that almost an hour has passed since the last time she looked at the time. Her and Becky have just passed the rest of the time in the same space without really saying anything and it hasn’t been totally unpleasant.  
  
Becky scrapes her stool back and stands, shaking her hair loose from its tie. She watches as Charlotte stands and cringes at the pain that’s clearly radiating through her muscles after being sitting still for so long.  
  
“It’s me,” Charlotte says quietly as she stares at the canvas.

“Well, yeah,” Becky answers with a frown. “You don’t like it.” It’s a statement rather than a question.  
  
“No, it’s…” She looks sad is what Charlotte wants to say but she doesn’t. She doesn’t even recognise herself, not really anyway and who the hell wants to admit to a relative stranger that they look sad? No one, that’s who. “I like it.” The words are heavy in her mouth, like she’s telling some sort of sordid lie and she is. Like she doesn’t want it to be her that Becky’s drawn at all.  
  
Despite herself, Charlotte lets her gaze wander back onto the drawing and she can feel the sting behind her eyes. She swallows heavily, trying to shift the lump that’s currently taking residence in her throat.  
  
“Are we done here?” She says eventually. It’s such a stupidly blunt thing to say that for a second she considers just turning and walking out the studio door in sheer embarrassment. The movement of Becky from her side makes her wonder if Becky expects her to do just that.  
  
“Um, yeah, that’s it. Listen, I know it’s weird – “  
  
“Can you just pay me so we’re done?”  
  
When Becky returns with the money there’s an awkward silence between them. How exactly do you say goodbye to someone who has just drawn you in exchange for money? Do you give a quick wave? A brief handshake? A promise to catch up another time? Or none of that, do you just leave?  
  
Charlotte decides on the latter and just heads for the door, and Becky is left standing wondering what the hell has just happened.

*****

It’s a weird Saturday for Charlotte.  
  
There’s an odd pull in her stomach and the image of that fucking drawing from last night plays in her mind on a loop like her brain’s own little cinema room. It’s not pretty viewing. It has managed to get under her skin.  
  
Charlotte doesn’t realise how much time has passed until Bayley comes into the kitchen to grab a bowl and cereal. That happens to Charlotte more than she’d like to admit to anyone. She’ll blink and the tv show she’s supposed to be watching is over, or the sun has set and the apartment is in darkness, or Bayley is finishing a conversation Charlotte can’t remember her even starting.  
  
“How did last night go?” Bayley asks as she plops herself down onto the couch next to Charlotte.  
  
“Remember a few months ago I told you about that woman who knocked into me and ruined my flowers?”  
  
Bayley simply nods.  
  
“Well, the woman was Becky, and no I’m not joking and no I don’t want to talk about it.”  
  
Bayley purses her lips to contain the smile that she certainly wants to beam in Charlotte’s direction because Bayley believes in all that nonsense. She believes that everything happens for a reason; that everything follows a certain path; that there are cosmic cupid laws at work in the universe and everyone is pulled into it at some point.

The odd sensation stays with Charlotte and she carries the troublesome weight in her stomach all day – from the time she leaves for her daily morning run, to the moment that she’s standing underneath the spray of the shower head trying to wash her thoughts right down the drain, to the moment she steps into the bar ready to start her shift.  
  
In all honesty, sometimes Charlotte wants to peel away her skin so that she can find a different person underneath.  
  
But then again, doesn’t everyone want to do that at times?  
  
-  
  
Becky comes to a stop outside a bar called ‘The Bar’ and it has a large beer glass neon sign above the door. If she hand picked a hundred bars in the city this still wouldn’t have made the list in regards to where Charlotte works.  
  
By the time Becky has stepped through the door she notices two things: one, that 50% of the people in the bar are wearing cop uniforms and the other 50% of people looked like they _should_ be wearing a cop uniform; and two, she stands out like a sore thumb.  
  
She’s about to turn and leave when a voice stops her. It’s broad, loud and characteristically British and it’s coming from the woman with the dark hair who is standing behind the dark wooden bar.  
  
“Not staying for a drink?”  
  
Now, Becky’s never has been one to back down from a challenge. Not even when she was younger and her best friend had told her she couldn’t make the jump over the ditch on her bike – she’d made the jump and it had come at the cost of a front tire but still, she’d _made_ it. So when the woman behind the bar raises an eyebrow at her, Becky decides that she won’t start backing down from a challenge now and makes her way towards the bar.  
  
It is quickly apparent that no one really cares that she’s there now; her sudden arrival has become irrelevant to the others who are here - there’s a large group of men who’s focus has turned back to the pool table, another large group of men go back to playing cards at a far away table and two women nurse their drink at the other side of the bar from where she now sits.  
  
“You don’t have a clue where you are, do you?” the woman behind the bar asks but not in a way that is condescending, it’s more curious than anything else.  
  
“I’m in a bar,” Becky replies as she takes another quick look around the room.  
  
The woman grins and Becky can’t help but smile back.  
  
“What can I get you?”  
  
“I’m lookin’ for someone actually. Charlotte. D’you know her?”  
  
“What do you want with Charlotte?”

“I just wanna talk to her about something, Bayley told me I could find her here – “  
  
“Becky?” Charlotte appears behind the woman at the bar like some sort of magic trick and her eyes give away her surprise at seeing Becky. “What are you doing here?”  
  
“I came to see you.”  
  
Becky watches as Charlotte whispers something into the other woman’s ear and then she’s tilting her head to the right and Becky follows the order, taking a few seats to the right of the bar so that she is sitting away from everyone else. It only takes a few minutes for Charlotte to join her.  
  
“What are you doing here? Are you following me or something?” Charlotte asks.  
  
“Why? Are you on Twitter?”  
  
“That’s an awful joke.”  
  
“Well I liked it. I told you,” Becky says, “I came to see you and Bayley told me where I could find you tonight.”

“You came to see me?” Charlotte’s lips move in a way that makes Becky think she’s going to smile or she’s at least thinking about it. But she doesn’t, Charlotte holds onto it and keeps it for herself.  
  
“I want to draw you again.” It’s said easily but there’s something else too, a surprising tingle of excitement at the idea of drawing Charlotte again, and every time Becky tries to untangle what that means, she just ends up in knots again. It almost feels like a challenge.  
  
“Is this a joke after last night? Because if it is, it isn’t funny.”  
  
Becky’s face softens as she peers into Charlotte’s own with concern. “No joke. Wait, you don’t look happy tonight.”  
  
“I’m fine. I’m happy enough for a Saturday night at work.”  
  
“I guess you need to be telling me some truth,” Becky agrees.  
  
“How do you figure that out?”  
  
“Cause your tip jar is pretty full,” Becky says nodding to the jar that sits on the bar with Charlotte’s name on it. “And it wouldn’t be if you were a moody dope.”  
  
Charlotte does smile this time. It’s a hesitant rich, complicated expression that trembles across her face like sunlight chasing away the shadows of the day. “You’re an ass.”  
  
“It has been known,” Becky agrees. “So, how about it?”  
  
“I’ll think about.”  
  
“You’ll think about it?”  
  
“Yeah. I’ll think about it,” Charlotte says as she slips off the seat. “I have work to do.”  
  
Becky will see Charlotte again. She knows she will. That’s the kind of thing that curves the world and pulls it into shape. There are very few fixed points and they points tend to be places. But, rarely and very unusually, they are people. Charlotte is now a hook in Becky’s life and Becky’s pretty sure she will get caught in it again.  
  
She’s perfectly fine with that.  
  
Charlotte doesn’t turn her head when she saunters away from Becky; there’s something in her head telling her she should but she doesn’t, she waits until she hears the tell tale noise of the door before she turns back to where Becky had been sitting. When she slips back behind the bar she finds three flowers sitting in her tip jar: Forget-Me-Not’s.  
  
She rolls her eyes and finds herself wanting to smile again.


	2. Chapter 2

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This is a dialogue heavy chapter but it couldn't really be helped, I hope it's okay :)

Charlotte wakes in a bit of a panic, her hand automatically going to her head so that she can run her fingers through her hair. Her forehead is damp with a thin coat of sweat and as she tries to get the breath back into her lungs she can hear the mundane sounds of early morning outside the window.  
  
She closes her eyes and her mind floods with flashes of orange and dark eyes and silly smiles and she bites her lip in embarrassment. The raw images of her dream come back a little too forcefully for her liking and there’s a smattering of colour on her cheeks now because of it.  
  
There’s pressure and a thigh between her legs and then there’s lips marking her all over the fucking place. And her free hand is at the waistband of her underwear and it’s… it’s absurd.  
  
The images dance across her mind behind her eyelids again and when she opens her eyes she knows who the dream has been about. She wants to laugh hysterically because it’s beyond belief in all honesty. Why does life have to be so stupid sometimes? And more to the point, why the hell does her subconscious want to hammer that point home?  
  
It’s simply stupid that she has just had a dream like that about Becky. Becky has waltzed right through her imagination - sitting on her little stool with a pencil in hand looking far more attractive than any pencil wielding person should.  
  
This dream doesn’t have to mean anything anyway, Charlotte reasons with herself in her head. A dream is just a dream and nothing more. It doesn’t matter or mean anything in the bigger picture.  
  
Except it totally does matter because sometimes dreams give us a taste and a glimpse of what our mind wants or what our heart is missing.  
  
She makes a fist with her hand and rolls over so she can shove it under her pillow and try to get a few more hours sleep.  
  
Charlotte finds herself laughing into her pillow after a few minutes.

  
Life is fucking ridiculous at times.  
  
Charlotte’s common sense has already packed its bag and moved out for the day so she reaches for her phone a few moments later.  
  
-  
  
The call comes just ten minutes after Becky’s blinked her eyes open; she’s still tired and disorientated but she grins when she sees who is calling her at this time of the morning.  
  
“Why do you want to draw me again?” Charlotte asks as soon as Becky answers the phone.  
  
“Good mornin’ to you too, Charlotte. How are you?”  
  
“I’m serious.”

“Okay, honestly? I just… wanna get to know you better. No harm in that is there?”  
  
Becky hears Charlotte sigh at the other end of the phone. “I guess not. Am I crossing the line by calling you like this?”  
  
“A few days ago I showed up at your work place unannounced to see you and left you flowers in a tip jar, I think you’re alright,” Becky replies easily. “But, y’know this is something real now that you’ve called me yourself, it means something. I hope you realise that.”  
  
“It’s just a phone call,” Charlotte replies instantly, even if she doesn’t totally believe that answer herself.  
  
“Your eyes were the hardest part of you to draw,” Becky announces after a few moments of silence. “And I usually nail the eyes but yours… I dunno. I struggled.”  
  
“And you want another shot at it?” Charlotte asks.  
  
“Yep, at some point. Hey, you wanna grab lunch later?”  
  
-

Becky arrives earlier than she should and manages to snag a two-person table tucked away in the corner right next to the window. The wood on the table is light and ridged, and worn with little raw wooden granules protruding outwards like they have escaped from the Sahara.  
  
The place is as busy as usual and there’s a multitude of people – mostly students, Becky guesses - there with MacBook’s and laptops and notebooks. A variety of books rest just out of reach on a sturdy shelf on the opposite wall and Becky finds herself hoping that people have read those books at some stage instead of them just being there to appear aesthetically pleasing.  
  
Next to the books are old looking speakers from a different decade that might still work if you had the time to put some work into them but probably don’t. They are most definitely not responsible for the gentle music that echoes softly off the walls and spills into the shop floor.  
  
Above them all, lamps are attached to frames and rest awkwardly, their chords are scattered in a helter – skelter type fashion along the ceiling so that the bulbs hang downwards. There’s no light coming from them though because the light outside pouring in through the window is enough for the entire place.  
  
The two baristas – Bayley and another woman Becky doesn’t know – look like they have woken up today and injected some of the sunshine directly into their veins as they are full of smiles and laughs for every customer. It must take a huge effort, Becky thinks.

As people filter in and out ordering food and drinks, Becky pulls the sketchpad and a pen from her bag that is currently resting on the floor. Each dog eared page is illustrated with sketches of various things from buildings to flowers to animals. Dates, times and notes surround each sketch.  
  
The residential type garden across the street complete with flowers and a bench and a fancy fountain that is spurting water upwards catches Becky’s eye and she gets to work.

She doesn’t know how much time has passed until there’s a shadow moving across her page and she looks up to find a smile being directed in her direction and Charlotte’s smile is almost too pretty for this world and Becky’s kinda dying because of it.  
  
“Fancy seeing you here,” Charlotte says and slips into the seat across from Becky’s.  
  
“Wait, you can see me?” Becky asks as she sits her pen down, eyes wide and patting her arms. “The spell must have worn off.”  
  
Charlotte shakes her head before picking up a menu, even though there’s no need because she gets the same thing every damn time. “What are you drawing?”  
  
“The garden across the road.”  
  
“Do you draw everything?”  
  
“Nah, I sketch a lot of things though,” Becky answers. “Well, anythin’ that takes my fancy. I draw people mostly as you already know, that’s like my thing.”  
  
“There’s a difference?” Charlotte asks. “Between what you sketch and draw?”  
  
“Definitely,” Becky answers as she shifts the weight from her left foot and onto her right underneath the table. “You’ll probably disagree.”  
  
She doesn’t know why but she wants Charlotte to agree with her about this. It doesn’t matter what else they might disagree about, and Becky knows there will probably be plenty, but this? She wants Charlotte to _get_ it.

Charlotte’s eyes flick down to the sketchpad and then she thinks back to the drawings in Becky’s studio, and she can see the differences now in her head. The current garden sketch is rough around the edges and looks like it has been quickly jotted down for convenience.  
  
The drawings she’s seen – her own included - are different. They have been drawn with the upmost care, like every single line with the pencil has been deliberate and nursed as it should be to create something wonderful.  
  
Becky’s good. Becky’s really good.  
  
Charlotte doesn’t really know much of anything about art but she can tell that Becky is talented. “Why the human form then? What is it about people?”  
  
Becky’s eyes light up then, there’s a smile on her face too and Charlotte can’t help but get wrapped up in it. “It’s everything about people, Charlotte.”  
  
And Becky means that because that’s the special thing about people: you can always open them up. Even if they seem strange or quiet or boring on the outside, there is always something interesting on the inside of everyone. It usually takes time and effort but it tends to be worth it.  
  
-  
  
The first hour passes quickly.  
  
The second hour flies by even quicker.  
  
Charlotte is talking too much and she’s well aware that she’s talking too much but she can’t stop herself. The filter switch has clearly malfunctioned and every silly mundane thought she’s had recently is spilling out onto the table between them and the strangest part of it all is that Becky doesn’t seem to mind, not even a little bit.  
  
Charlotte tries to form a tight laugh but it dies in her throat. “This is new to me, I guess. Having someone new I can share things with. Oh God that sounds sad, doesn’t it?” Charlotte’s cheeks go hot and she has to bite her lip to stop her rambling.  
  
“Hey,” Becky says, knocking her foot against Charlotte’s leg underneath the table. “It’s okay. It takes three attempts at my life to scare me off, and even then, if there’s good tea around I’ll probably still come back.”  
  
Becky says it with a silly grin and somehow Charlotte finds herself smiling back. How the hell does Becky do that, set her at ease so quickly? Charlotte hasn’t a clue and doesn’t want to dwell on it too much anyway because it’s perhaps easier to not think about what that means.  
  
“Sometimes, it's just easier to tell someone you don’t know really well things. It's like there's less risk, you can open up to someone who doesn't know you and then they can’t really judge.”  
  
“I get that,” Becky hums in agreement.  
  
“I don’t have many friends anymore,” Charlotte admits, “I mean I talk to people when I have to. I smile at them. I tolerate and talk to people when I’m at work but most of my friends… disappeared on me when my life wasn’t endless parties and money anymore. So, I just don’t let many people in.”  
  
The funny thing about armour, Charlotte is beginning to realise for some reason, is that it doesn’t just keep other people out. It keeps you in too. You build it on you in protective layers and before you realise it you’ve trapped yourself in it and it’s a struggle to get back out of.  
  
“They weren’t your people then. Look, you wanna be happy like everyone else,” Becky says simply, “you’re just scared that it might mean letting _someone_ in behind those walls you’ve built.”  
  
“And… and by that you mean you?”  
  
“I can climb,” Becky answers quickly. “I can fuckin’ climb y’know.”  
  
“That doesn’t surprise me in the slightest, Becky.”  
  
“Nah?”  
  
“Absolutely not. But the image of you trying to climb something is amusing for some reason, I think it’s your height.”  
  
Charlotte catches Becky’s eye then and it makes her laugh and in return Becky laughs too. Charlotte’s laugh is so innocent and authentic that it almost breaks Becky’s heart and the voice inside Becky’s head is telling her to stop staring at Charlotte, but for some reason she can’t. It’s almost like an instinct to keep looking at Charlotte.  
  
Charlotte is metal and Becky is very much a magnet.  
  
When you start to understand someone and get to know them better, you hone in on the important things. You begin to dwell on their humour and their energy and the things that make them smile or laugh or the things that make you feel safe around them. When you get to know the inside of someone instead of just the shell then everything else falls into place like it should.  
  
Charlotte is attractive on the outside, everyone can see it, but on the inside?

Well, on the inside Charlotte is really fucking beautiful, Becky decides, and that’s the most important thing.  

*****

They fall into a sort of routine over the next few weeks. They text each other every day and Becky occasionally calls her when she has the time – she has three commissioned pieces to get through and her plan of locking herself in her studio is going well by all accounts.  
  
It’s almost three hours into Charlotte’s shift and the time is flying past. The bar is packed and getting increasingly busier as the night goes on. It’s the same every Friday night and Charlotte can’t help but grimace at the routine feel of it all.  
  
Three successive beeps from her phone break Charlotte from her grimace.  
  
**Becky** : Charlotte.

 **Becky** : How did I not recognise your voice that first night you called me?  
  
**Becky** : I just thought about it.  
  
Charlotte shakes her head and rolls her eyes. This is the kind of random texts she’s becoming used to. Before she can even reply to those messages more messages follow.  
  
**Becky** : I’m almost done for tonight.  
  
**Becky** : My hand has cramped up.  
  
**Becky** : Help. Look.  
  
Charlotte clicks on the photo that follows the text and sure enough, Becky’s hand is positioned in a weird sort of curled claw shape and Charlotte can see where the lead has stained the tips of Becky’s fingers, and how are you not supposed to smile at that?  
  
“I take it from that smile that Becky is texting you,” Paige says from Charlotte’s left. She gives Charlotte a look before she’s turning her back and reaching for a glass. “It’s been weeks, when is she paying us another visit?”  
  
“Shut up.”  
  
“Knew it,” Paige bumps her hip against Charlotte’s own as she moves past her again in the opposite direction.  
  
Charlotte's attention falls back onto her phone instead of Paige.  
  
**Charlotte** : I don’t know why you didn’t recognise my voice, I guess it’s not memorable!  
  
**Becky** : Why you lying?  
  
**Charlotte** : I’m not. Paige says I smile when I talk to you. She’s the one lying but I thought you should know anyway.  
  
**Becky:** I don’t think she’s lying.  
  
**Charlotte** : She is.  
  
**Becky** : Is not.

*****

Charlotte’s mind is a mess of tiredness and the more she tries to think about things the murkier her thoughts become. It’s like trying to untangle the Christmas light wires that you promise won’t be in the same state the following year.  
  
She takes another sip of her wine, closes her eyes and allows the golden liquid to completely wash over her taste buds, and wash over them it does - sweet and gently sparkling with delicate hints of honey and flowers and fresh grapes and all the other bullshit people say to describe wine. She can’t remember when she had picked up this particular bottle, or who had recommended it to her, but it’s nice and she’s enjoying it and that’s the main thing right now.

And though she’ll never consider herself any sort of wine expert, the small collection she’s acquired over the last few years is diverse and pretty accomplished, and probably able to satisfy the palate of most people. It’s one of the few perks of working where she does – there are always new bottles and flavours to be found.  
  
The sound of a not so distant siren pulls Charlotte away from her moment of peace. As she opens her eyes, she watches as the lights are switched off in one of the apartments across the street from her own.  
  
Just as she has another sip of her wine, her phone rings. Her stomach does that funny thing where it feels like it’s bobbing up and down on the surface of the sea, and it’s stupid really. The name on the screen reads: Becky.  
  
Without even realising it, Charlotte breathes out in relief while allowing a silly smile to grace her lips.  
  
“Hey,” Charlotte answers the call, returning her attention to the city lights that wink in and out of existence outside the window. “I didn’t think I would hear from you tonight. I thought you’d crash out as soon as you were done for the day.”  
  
“Seriously?” Becky replies, and Charlotte can hear the amusement in her voice. “When have you known me to go to sleep this early?”  
  
“True,” Charlotte accepts. “So how was your day locked inside your studio?”  
  
“Pretty normal, commissioned pieces always stress me out a little so it’s easier to just blank everyone.”  
  
“Makes sense I guess.”  
  
“Yeah… it’s kinda lonely at times,” Becky admits, “and it makes my brain buzz so I thought I’d give you a call.”  
  
Charlotte picks up a hint of worry in Becky’s voice for some reason and she has no idea why. “You can always call me, Becky.”  
  
“Do you… would you maybe like some company right now?” Becky asks.  
  
“It’s a pretty long way for you to come all the way over here.”  
  
“True, but can you do me a favour? Can you have a look out your window?”  
  
“My window?” Charlotte asks as she stands from the couch and heads towards the window. “Okay, I’m looking out my window.”  
  
“I know, but look down towards your right.”  
  
Charlotte does.  
  
Becky, who is wearing a long black coat and a beanie hat, waves up at her, her phone still held against her right ear.  
  
“Why didn’t you just come in and knock?”  
  
“I don’t want to intrude,” Becky answers and then smiles up towards the window. “So, does that mean you’d like my company?”  
  
“Yeah,” Charlotte gives in, returning the smile. “I’d love some company.”

-  
  
“You wrote all over the walls?!” Becky laughs.  
  
“I did,” Charlotte confirms with a small smile that’s verging on embarrassed. “My parents weren’t happy at all.”  
  
“Can you blame them? Sounds like you had a wild imagination as a kid.”  
  
Charlotte shrugs feebly. “I guess. I was pretty lonely growing up when I think back on it. When I got to a certain age… I realised that I didn’t really have many real friends, not like the ride or die type.”  
  
“Lemme guess, you were the Queen Bee as a teenager?” Becky smirks.  
  
“You got it,” Charlotte forfeits, but there’s something melancholic about her tone, it sounds a lot like regret. “Thank God I grew out of that.”  
  
She reaches for her wine at the same time Becky does and their fingers brush innocently. It’s nothing major. It’s just basic human contact. Charlotte watches the stillness of Becky’s face, there are no frown lines but the slight curve of dimples peek out against Becky’s cheeks.  
  
“Why do you draw?” Charlotte asks as she grabs her glass and looks back up at Becky. “Why is that your career?”  
  
Becky’s brows creep upwards, punctuating her temple with a frown. It’s not as if no one has ever asked her that question – many people have – but she has a feeling that Charlotte needs a truthful answer to justify why she has involved herself with Becky in the first place. Charlotte needs something authentic and real.  
  
And it’s an innocent question on the surface but underneath it’s a deeply personal question to any artist.  
  
“Well, I mean most people want to escape, don’t they? Get out their heads an’ their lives. Drawing is a pretty good way to do that. I wasn’t good at school at anything really but I could draw and I love doing it. When I draw nothing else matters, I’m in the zone and I love the feeling it gives me.”  
  
“And you… support yourself well with it?”  
  
“Yeah. I mean, I’m not filthy rich as you can probably tell. And I’ve struggled plenty with it but I… just kept at it and here I am.”  
  
Becky’s not ashamed of her background and how she's got to where she is now. She isn’t ashamed that she doesn’t have any artistic training or fancy art degree or anything like that but she finds herself being reluctant to look back in Charlotte’s direction for some reason.  
  
“You can look at me, Becky,” Charlotte insists. “It’s not as if I can judge you. I work in a glorified cop bar called ‘The Bar’ and still live with my best friend who will probably be home soon.”  
  
Becky tilts her head in Charlotte’s direction. “Why do you work in that bar then?”  
  
Charlotte regards Becky for a second, wondering what trivial excuse she can come up with that doesn’t sound pathetic but she struggles. Becky raises an eyebrow in Charlotte’s direction, prompting her to answer.

Charlotte sucks in a harsh breath through her lungs and then expels it slowly from her mouth. She hadn’t intended to bring this topic up but the window is open and she can’t help but push it further open so that Becky can somehow climb in through it.  
  
The words tumble out of Charlotte’s mouth before she can even process what she’s saying. “I don’t have a place in the world. You know how most people have a person that makes them feel at home or a place or a dream? I don’t have that anymore. I have routine.”  
  
Surprised at the extremely personal answer, Becky nods her appreciation. “I get the feelin’ of being lost in this world – ” before she can continue Charlotte cuts her off again.  
  
“No, it’s not that. I don’t really get the idea of being lost,” Charlotte replies honestly.  
  
Being lost is one of those things that you learn when you’re a kid, a sense of time and place that only has meaning if you really belong somewhere, if you were expected even. Everyone always knew where Charlotte was because everything had usually been decided beforehand for her, and therefore she had never been lost.

“My parents supported me financially and helped me with my studies but it was always about what _they_ expected me to do. Not what I wanted to do, so I decided to walk away from that and here I am.” There’s a sardonic chuckle as Charlotte shrugs. “The plan has kind of backfired as you can see and I’m stuck in a rut.”  
  
“That was brave y’know,” Becky says quietly.  
  
Some people are naturally brave. Others, like Charlotte, have learned to fake it. She still has no idea if real bravery and fake bravery is the same thing. But there’s always that little voice in Charlotte’s head saying that bravery is about overcoming whatever you’re afraid of, not about not having any fear in the first place.  
  
“Not really.”  
  
“I’m tellin’ you, you did what you thought you had to do for yourself,” Becky says. “Not what was easiest for you and you’re ownin’ it. I know most people wouldn’t be brave enough for that but you are.”  
  
The silence they slip into is heavy enough and so Becky decides not to push any further. The silence lingers throughout their drink and only a few idle words pass between them for a few moments. It’s an odd sort of silence that is slightly unnerving but not entirely uncomfortable.  
  
In fact, given time, Charlotte thinks silences with Becky could become pretty damn comfortable and that’s really one of the biggest compliments you can give someone.  
  
“Like I’ve said,” Charlotte says after a few minutes, “you’re the only new friend I’ve made in God knows how long.”  
  
“I don’t get it, to be honest,” Becky says, her tone bordering on concern.  
  
“You are. It all changed when I did, money does funny things to people. You become… less to certain people when you’re not involved in that circle of things.”  
  
“People actually told you that you meant less to them because of that?”  
  
“Not in so many words,” Charlotte answers quietly, “but I could feel it happening with people. We started to drift apart rapidly, and then I wasn’t invited to things and so on. It was like I embarrassed them or whatever.”  
  
“Let me ask you somethin’,” Becky says. “Do you regret it? Do you regret taking this path?”  
  
“No,” Charlotte answers instantly, “I don’t think so anyway.”  
  
“And if you could go back and do it again would you change what you chose?” Becky asks.  
  
Charlotte doesn’t even need to think too hard about it. “No, this is my life and I get to choose what I want to do with it.”  
  
“Well then, there’s your answer; fuck those people who left you behind,” Becky says, giving Charlotte a smile. “It’s their loss, y’know? What you did was one of the hardest things anyone could probably do but you did it. Kinda proud of you.”  
  
“And why’s that?”  
  
“Cause,” Becky starts with a shrug and then there’s a proud smile on her face, “you’re being you and that’s one of the hardest things for anyone to do. To be ourselves, like really be ourselves, it takes a lot of courage and confidence. Most people just do what others expect instead of what they really want.”  
  
“You think?”  
  
Becky nods vigorously then. “Totally. Being an individual isn’t always as easy as it sounds. We all go through different things and phases and people. You meet people who change you for the good and then people you dislike – “  
  
“And people you do like,” Charlotte interrupts as she looks back at Becky. Charlotte knows she’ll meet a lot of people in her lifetime, many of who will have no lasting influence on her life. Then there are the people who have changed her. She can count them all on one hand. Luckily though there’s enough room on her hand for Becky.  
  
“Yeah, people you do like,” Becky agrees easily. “Especially those people.”  
  
There are some people you need to stay away from, people who add nothing to your quality of life. Then there are people you want to be stuck with, the people with the golden touches and the soothing words and that magic spark.  
  
“How did you end up here then?” Charlotte asks.  
  
“Because I wanted to be here. Originally started off in New York but the ‘Big Apple’ quickly turned into the ‘Sour Apple’ so I had to look for opportunities elsewhere.”  
  
“And your parents and everyone were okay with it?”  
  
Becky tilts her head and Charlotte can tell she’s working over an answer in her mind before saying it out loud. “They kinda had to be. I just decided to do it one day and started planning it. I was comfortable with who I was and what I stood for and art was just… I needed to see more of the world I guess. I was just bein’ me, bein’ myself and it felt good.”  
  
“What about you then, do you regret any of it?”  
  
“Not even for a second,” Becky replies instantly. “I have different hair and different make up and different clothes but underneath it I’m still who I wanna be.”  
  
“For what it’s worth,” Charlotte starts before pausing for a second, “I’m glad you some how made it here, Becky.”  
  
“So am I.”  
  
Sometimes, and it’s rare, but with certain people you don’t have to be touching them to feel them.

*****

Becky stares at the entrance of the ice cream shop, watching her best friend walk out with a cup of chocolate ice cream in one hand a cup of strawberry in the other. The place is unsurprisingly busy given the sunshine overhead but despite the sun there’s a breeze blowing to keep the heat from becoming totally oppressive.  
  
As Sasha crosses the parking lot, the wind picks up, and her light blue dress rises above her knees. She struggles to keep it down without spilling the ice cream – because priorities obviously – and Becky can hear her cursing as she gets closer to Becky’s car.  
  
Becky tries not to laugh as she leans across to open the door, asking: “Need any help, Sasha?”  
  
“No,” Sasha says, wedging her body into the car. She settles in, handing Becky her strawberry ice cream. “And you can stop laughing at me right now.”  
  
“What took you so long?”  
  
Sasha digs into her ice cream before she says: “The place is packed, if you wanted this quicker you should have got off your ass and got it yourself.”  
  
Becky murmurs a few more words of agreement, eating her ice cream as Sasha continues a litany of complaints about everyone in the ice cream shop, from the woman who was talking on her phone to the man who waited in the queue for ten minutes and then couldn’t decide what he wanted when he reached the counter.  
  
After a while Becky zones out, staring at the parking lot, thinking about the kind of week she’s had and her plans for later.  
  
“Getting on a little!” Sasha all but yells, loud enough to snap Becky’s attention back into focus. “How can anyone be ‘getting on’ or be too old for ice cream?”  
  
Becky stares at her then. “What?”  
  
“Have you heard a word I’ve said, Becky?”  
  
She tries to sound convincing. “Course I have.”  
  
Sasha frowns. “You’re thinking about Charlotte, aren’t you?”

Becky is surprised by the question and knows her face has already given her thoughts away. However, she tries to lie anyway in an attempt to avoid the third degree that is absolutely coming her way. “Nah.”  
  
“You’re lying to me,” Sasha counters. “What even are you two anyway? Friends? Seeing each other? Dating? Why haven’t I met her?”  
  
Becky opens her mouth and she feels her lips move but no sound comes out because honestly she doesn’t have the answer to any of those questions. Not a single one.  
  
“Exactly,” Sasha deadpans.  
  
Becky wants to laugh it off, but she knows that she can’t. Logic eludes her where Charlotte is concerned at times. “Don’t start. It’s none of your business anyway.”  
  
Sasha laughs then, a loud laugh that rattles in Becky’s ears. “Oh please, Becky. Every woman you date is my business. You know I like to screen them first.”  
  
Becky closes her eyes, willing her best friend to stop. She doesn’t want to have this conversation. “We’re not even dating.”  
  
“Whatever. I see you smiling.”  
  
Becky is; her cheeks are beginning to hurt from the strain of keeping her mouth shut. “You’re horrible.”  
  
“Since when?” Sasha huffs.  
  
“Since…” Becky lets her voice trail off. “Since I said so, so shut it.”  
  
Sasha makes a great show of scraping her plastic spoon around the cardboard cup as she wipes it clean. Then she sighs heavily, as if being there with Becky is some massive chore for her. “Can I have the rest of yours?”  
  
“Nah.”  
  
“Okay, you’re not dating Charlotte, I get it. I won’t say it again.”  
  
Sasha goes back to scraping her cardboard cup. To add to the annoyance she starts tapping the side of it with her nail. A minute passes before Becky feels the best friend guilt. She tries to fight it by eating more ice cream but it sticks in her throat.  
  
“Fuck sake,” Becky says as she hands over the cup. “Here. Take it.”  
  
“Thank you,” Sasha answers sweetly. “Do you wanna get dinner tonight?”  
  
“I’d love to,” Becky replies. “But I’ve made plans with Charlotte. We’re gonna try out this new street food place.”  
  
Becky’s reply doesn’t seem to surprise Sasha but it does seem to please her for some reason. “Well, I hope it goes good.”  
  
“I’ve hardly seen her this week, I've been doing my impression of a hermit.”  
  
Sasha isn’t surprised by that either. There has been times in their friendship when she hasn’t seen Becky for a week or close to two because she’s been holed up in her studio drawing until her hand doesn’t work properly.  
  
“You know when work gets crazy like this you need to get out of that studio,” Sasha states, “so don’t even think about canceling on her or whatever.”  
  
Becky pulls a face at Sasha then. “I wasn’t going to anyway.”  
  
“I bet not.”  
  
“Shut it.”  
  
-  
  
“You up for a walk?”  
  
“After eating my body weight in Chinese food?” Becky asks. “That sounds… great.”  
  
“It does, huh?” Charlotte bumps her shoulder against Becky’s own and if their fingers brush against each others with every couple of steps then neither of them mention it.  
  
The light is beginning to fade above them and the sky is streaked by hues of amber and pink, and, as they walk, Charlotte comments on how clear the sky looks.  
  
Becky listens to Charlotte talk about the weather, about the film she watched a few nights ago, about a random guy who was drunk in the bar the night before and refused to leave until he was swiftly reminded that he was in a bar full of off duty cops.

Becky always loves it when Charlotte has a story to tell her, regardless of what it is, because Charlotte’s attention is complete and it feels a lot like sunlight.  
  
“Can I ask you for a favour?” Charlotte asks after they’ve been walking for about fifteen minutes. “Can I see the drawing that you did of me again?”  
  
Becky wonders if this walk has been intentional because without even realising it herself they have been walking in the direction of her place and her studio. “Sure you can.”  
  
Ten minutes later Becky grabs the key from her pocket and pushes the door to her studio open after she’s unlocked it, and she’s hit with the familiar scent of lead and paint and canvas. She flicks on the light and watches as the studio erupts in a gentle yellow glow. This is home.  
  
Charlotte’s drawing is propped against the wall in the corner and even though it has been weeks since she drew it she hasn’t gotten around to moving it until now. Becky lifts it up onto her display table and steps back so that Charlotte can see it properly again.  
  
Something changes then.  
  
There’s a shift in the atmosphere and Becky’s not entirely sure it’s a good one. It actually feels like a massive rain cloud has formed in the room, looming over everything and about to dump buckets of cold rain all over them.  
  
Charlotte looks at the drawing of herself and wonders if she has possibly developed two personalities. On the outside, she seems as she always does. She looks calm and composed and very much in control. Inside, however, it feels a bit like she is all over the place; a storm in a teacup type of thing, and some how Becky has managed to capture the depth of that in the drawing.  
  
And it’s not like she hadn’t noticed it immediately when she’d seen the drawing initially because she had but the last few weeks Charlotte has felt happier and some how this drawing – a snap shot of her frozen in time – doesn’t reflect that new happiness at all.  
  
“You said you wanted to draw me again but you haven’t,” Charlotte says softly. “Why?”  
  
“Cause I’ve been too busy getting to know you and I like doing that as much as I like drawing.”  
  
“Why though?”  
  
“Cause I do. Do you wanna talk about this drawing?” Becky asks gently.  
  
Charlotte shrugs and the light dims a little in her eyes, and something else slides into its place: a cloud, pregnant with affliction. “It doesn’t really make a difference does it?”  
  
“I dunno,” Becky says, “maybe it might make some difference.”  
  
Charlotte doesn’t say anything for a moment.  
  
“Charlotte?”  
  
Finally, Charlotte speaks again, “A few years ago I read this book.” Her index finger taps out a gentle rhythm against the edge of the canvas. Her finger eventually stops next to her own face, as if she’s trying to rub away some of the pencil. “Anyway, this book, it was written by some scientist who was trying to explain how the universe works and all that kind of thing. It was written for people like me who will never have a clue about that stuff but there was something that stayed with me.”  
  
Becky sees Charlotte scratch at the drawing with her nail and Becky has to restrain herself from making a comment because that’s _her_ work but there’s something telling her to hang fire right now. Charlotte glances towards her and then back down at the drawing.  
  
“This one part,” Charlotte starts, “it was all about quantum mechanics and probabilities. I only got the basics of it but the core point of the theory is that all possible outcomes of a certain situation can happen. Like, in this outcome, we had dinner and we came to your studio and you let me see this drawing again; but in another, we went some place else to get dinner and went some place else afterwards; and in another you had dinner with someone else… and are here with them instead of me.”  
  
“You mean like a parallel universe type of thing?” Becky asks and she kinda thinks she knows where this conversation is going now.  
  
Charlotte nods. “It’s like in each universe there’s a copy of you who thinks that their reality is the right one. Which means, somewhere out there, you and me are somewhere else after having dinner.” Charlotte’s eyes move around the studio and then land back to the drawing. “And somewhere out there, there’s a version of me that doesn’t look like this drawing. I don’t recognise that as me… it’s strange.”  
  
It is difficult to know what to say to Charlotte’s words because Becky is not a liar and to deny that Charlotte looks almost sad would be a lie and that’s not a road Becky wants to start traveling down.  
  
“I remember when I was around 16,” Charlotte says. Her voice is still small and bordering on distressed. “We had this fancy family dinner and my parents spoke about all the things I was going to do and there was almost… no consideration about what _I_ actually wanted to do.” She looks up at Becky again. “That was the moment I should have tried to change things instead of going along with everything they wanted. Maybe that is the universe I should be in and not in this one.”  
  
“You told me that you don’t regret taking this path though,” Becky argues.  
  
“I don’t.”  
  
“Well then, if you don’t regret taking this path then this is the universe you should be in. Maybe in another world I’m not an artist,” Becky offers.  
  
“Maybe in another world I am.”  
  
Becky gets an idea then. It starts off as a tiny thing at the back of her mind and before she knows it it has snowballed into a bigger idea and the words are falling out of her mouth before she can think about anything else.  
  
“You wanna try it? Art, I mean.”  
  
“No.” Charlotte shakes her own head and looks at Becky as if she’s grown three. “Firstly, I wouldn’t know what to draw and secondly, I’d probably be pretty bad at it.”  
  
“I know what you can draw,” Becky says and she nudges her arm against Charlotte’s before she’s crossing the room and shoving at the large blue metal sliding door that gives way to Becky’s apartment on the other side. It’s the first time Charlotte’s caught a glimpse of Becky’s apartment and it looks modern and stylish and everything she’d expected it to be.  
  
Becky disappears out of view for a moment before she’s returning through the door with a thin white ceramic vase that contains a bunch of flowers that Charlotte recognises immediately. Apparently the Forget-Me-Not’s have made quite the impression on Becky. Becky sits the vase next to the window and the flowers almost pop with colour due to the last of the light filtering in from outside.  
  
“You can draw our – the - flowers,” Becky states as she moves across to the other side of the room. She picks up a bottle of blue paint from her supplies and in her other hand is a pretty box that looks excruciatingly expensive and the words ‘ _Faber-Castell’_ are inscribed on the front of it in silver type letters. “Paint or pencil?”  
  
“Are you serious?”  
  
Becky grins at her. “As a heart attack. So?”  
  
Charlotte relents with a shake of her head and then she nods at the bottle of blue paint in Becky’s hand. “Paint.”  
  
“Okay, take a seat over at the canvas and I’ll bring everything to you.”  
  
Charlotte settles herself down onto the stool that Becky had sat on to draw her a few weeks previous. It’s spongy underneath her weight and she wonders how Becky doesn’t get back ache sitting on this flimsy thing. There’s a fresh canvas already prepared and Charlotte runs her fingers over the smoothness of it.  
  
There’s almost a bounce in Becky’s step as she returns with a palette that contains several colours: blue and green and yellow and white. The brush Charlotte is handed looks old and used but it is still in impeccable condition. Becky stands behind her so she can slip off her jacket and then Becky’s rolling Charlotte’s own sleeves up for her.  
  
“Trust me, you wanna roll your sleeves up for this,” is the only explanation Becky gives her.  
  
Charlotte looks down at the brush she's clutching and it almost feels foreign in her hand. She tries holding it like she would hold a pen but it doesn’t work and she hears Becky laugh behind her.  
  
“Are you planning on writin’ me a letter with that brush?” Becky asks.  
  
“No.”  
  
“Well then.”  
  
“Tell me what to do then,” Charlotte says and she feels Becky shift behind her. “Show me what to do.”  
  
Vanilla. That is what Charlotte smells like when Becky presses in tightly against her back and curls her hand around Charlotte’s own. Vanilla and an undercurrent of expensive perfume. It’s a subtle and attractive smell that distracts Becky for a second. It all feels very heavy. It feels heavy in the same way the air does before a thunderstorm rips through the sky.  
  
“You need to hold the brush like this,” Becky breathes, her voice at Charlotte’s neck and Charlotte’s pretty sure there’s a shiver literally tiptoeing up her spine. “Make sure your grip isn’t too hard either.”  
  
Charlotte feels it immediately when Becky pulls away from her and clears her throat. She doesn’t turn her head to see what Becky is doing because she simply doesn’t trust herself around Becky at times because it would be so easy to drop the brush and stand up and press Becky against the wall and kiss her until her lungs give up.  
  
But she doesn’t.

Charlotte likes to think that you attract people into your life. Like you subconsciously broadcast what you want and need, and certain people hear that subconscious call in their own head and go towards it so that you can see if you fit together. As she dips the brush into the paint for the first time, she hears Becky put music on and turn the volume down low and Charlotte thinks that maybe Becky is the one who has heard her after all.  
  
-

Charlotte stands and then glances at the brush in her hand, there’s paint residue on her hands and fingers and she finds she doesn’t even care about it. Then she stares at the canvas where her interpretation of the Forget-Me-Not’s rest and then back towards Becky who is still standing behind her. “How the hell did I paint that?”  
  
“That was all you,” Becky says softly as she takes a few steps forward so she’s standing next to Charlotte, “you’re magic.”  
  
Something in Charlotte’s chest ignites and the embers that’s have been petering away flicker into flames and she finds it harder to breathe when she looks at Becky.  
  
And it’s because she knows Becky’s eyes are locked onto her own and until now she hadn’t noticed. She had thought that Becky had been too lost in what she has painted but Becky hasn’t been, Becky has been too lost in Charlotte herself.  
  
Becky tilts her head and looks at Charlotte then. Really looks at her. Becky looks at her as if she is the brightest star in the blackest of nights.  
  
There’s a live current that runs between them like a match being held too close to a flame, on the verge of exploding into something bright and powerful and beautiful.

“You really don’t have a clue, do you?” Becky’s voice is coloured by a surprising wonder and Charlotte’s wary of where this is going for some reason.  
  
“I don’t have a clue about what?”  
  
“About you. About how amazin’ you are.”  
  
Without another word, Becky leans in to kiss Charlotte then. It is both a surprise and exactly what she’s been waiting to do and the paint brush drops to the floor in a small clatter. Her lips brush against Charlotte’s own and Charlotte kisses her back and hopes that it isn’t obvious how much she’s wanted Becky to kiss her.  
  
But then Charlotte’s forgetting her worries when Becky’s hand rises up to trace her cheek and then tangle in her hair. The rough touch sends fireworks across Charlotte’s skin and she realises that Becky was wrong.  
  
Charlotte isn’t magic. This is. This is magic at its most basic form.  
  
Becky’s lips linger on Charlotte’s own: desperate, warm and lasting. And then Becky pulls away, her breath getting caught in her chest and Charlotte understands the kiss for it is – Becky hasn’t just kissed her, Becky has just read her.  
  
Becky eases back and her hand slides downwards to curl around Charlotte’s neck and for the first time Charlotte looks suddenly and adorably shy.  
  
“Was… was that okay?” Becky asks. “Like…”  
  
There’s a hesitation in Becky’s voice like she’s not sure how to continue and Charlotte thinks maybe she should lend a hand at this part.  
  
“It was better than okay. It was great. Really great actually.” Maybe she shouldn’t be so empathic about, but she’s also smiling from ear to ear, so it’s not as if Becky can misread the situation.  
  
Becky’s eyes brighten and then flit back down towards Charlotte’s lips again. “Wanna do it again then?”  
  
Charlotte can only fist her hand in the fabric of Becky’s t-shirt and bring them closer together again.  
  
She’s had kisses that were passionate and fiery; kisses that were so sweet that they tasted of candy; and kisses that cut right to the bone but Charlotte has never had a kiss that said ‘welcome home’ until now.  
  
Sometimes you’re just meant to find certain people in every possible outcome in every possible universe.


End file.
